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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Torn Between Two Characters -- Jen Doktorski

This
month we’re blogging about our first loves in literature—books, authors, and
characters. When it comes to characters, I had a difficult time choosing
between my two fave fictional fellas. Though their stories are both set in
England, they couldn’t be more different.

One is brooding and not quite
handsome.

“He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow.” (From
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.)

The other is, well, furry.

“It seemed a very unusual kind of bear.
It was brown in colour, a rather dirty brown, and it was wearing a most odd-looking
hat, with a wide brim…from beneath the brim two large, round eyes stared back
at her.” (From A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond.)

Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre or
Paddington Bear. Who to pick?

I guess if I had to say which character
I fell in love with first, it would have to be Paddington Bear. I didn’t read
Jane Eyre until I was twelve. But Paddington and I? We go way back. I
discovered him on a rainy Sunday at the B. Dalton bookstore in the Ocean County
Mall. I was seven or eight and A Bear Called Paddington was the first chapter
book I remembering buying with my own money. I still have the book.

The cover
looked like this and it’s packed away in my parents’ attic with the rest of my
collection—More About Paddington, Paddington Helps Out, Paddington at Large and
Paddington Marches On. Sorry Mr. Rochester, the fact that Paddington was also
the first series I read, tipped the odds in his favor.

For a kid who loved to read,
Paddington was the complete package. A kind-hearted, free-spirited bear with an
affinity for sweets and a knack for causing calamities. He enters the lives of
the Brown family when Mr. and Mrs. Brown find him sitting on his suitcase at
Paddington Station in London sporting a blue duffle coat, a floppy hat, and a
tag that reads “Please look after this bear. Thank you.” He’d arrived from “Darkest
Peru” as a stowaway, surviving on the jar of orange marmalade in his suitcase.
Paddington had lived with his Aunt Lucy but left when she went to live in a
home for retired bears. The Brown family took pity on him, named him after the
station where he was found, and took him home to live with their children,
Jonathon and Judy, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bird.

I recently read a BBC interview with
author that said author Michael Bond wrote A Bear Called Paddington, first
published in 1958, in his spare time while working as a cameraman for the BBC. A
stuffed bear he had given his wife, the duffle coat he wore, and a childhood
memory from World War II were his inspirations. “When I was small, I had
memories of children being evacuated from London with a label around their
necks and all their possessions in a suitcase, and this became part of
Paddington as well," Bond said in the interview.

Twenty years ago, when my sister
went to London for the first time, she brought back this anthology for me,
which I’ve kept in my bedroom, with my stuffed Paddington, ever since. (My
husband still doesn’t understand who Paddington is and what he’s doing on our
bed.) I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen with our daughter. I introduced
her to Paddington a few years ago when she was first started reading chapter
books and wasn’t quite ready for Harry Potter. I re-read all the stories with
her and they were as wonderful as I remembered. One in particular gave us a
serious case of the giggles. (The kind that usually only happened when we read
Junie B. Jones.) In Paddington and the Christmas Shopping, my favorite bear manages
to cause mayhem in a London department store. The story is filled with
slapstick-like moments, including Paddington getting stuck in the store’s
revolving door with a clothes line, but the funniest moment occurs when he manages
to drop his peppermint “bullseye” candy from his mouth into the ear of the unsuspecting
sales clerk who's trying to help Paddington with his shopping. (Double points for the ew
factor.) My daughter laughed so hard she had tears streaming down her cheeks. What
can I say? I guess with both love a guy who can make us laugh.

Glad I could make you smile, Jody. We need a laugh during this polar vortex! :) Nancy, I'll bet Clara would love Paddington! I know my daughter also got a kick out of British sayings. It prepared her for Harry Potter.

Interesting post! I think I've heard of Paddington, but I never read the books. It's nice to hold on to childhood mementos like that, because they do bring up good memories. I still have my favorite doll from when I was a little girl, though I let go of all my other stuffed animals.